The messy, sleazy drama that always seems to follow the Clinton family has produced an 11th-hour crisis which involves sex-texts sent by the husband of Hillary Clinton’s closest aide and serious questions about private emails by the candidate herself.

Saucily dubbed DickiLeaks — after WikiLeaks released a number of hacked emails and documents from Clinton campaign officials — this is how the saga unravelled...

Close: Huma Abedin has been by Hillary Clinton's side for nearly 20 years, pictured together

After initial denials it was him, it is established that it was. He’d taken the photo of himself and meant to send it to a 21-year-old student in Seattle. Instead, he accidentally tweeted it to his 45,000 Twitter followers.

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Weiner was forced to explain that he’d exchanged X-rated photos and messages — on Twitter, Facebook, email and occasionally on the phone — with ‘about’ six women over the previous three years. This period covered the entire length of his relationship with his girlfriend Huma Abedin, who is Hillary Clinton’s closest adviser. By the time the scandal broke, they had married and she was pregnant.

Desperate to save his reputation, Weiner insisted he had never met the women. However, as public ridicule became unbearable, he resigned from Congress. The couple remained together.

Lewd selfies: Anthony Weiner, left, was found sending pictures to Sydney Leathers, right

Then, in 2013, the scandal re-erupted when it emerged that Weiner, who by now was running to become New York mayor, was exposed again. Using the alias Carlos Danger, he was found sending lewd messages and pictures to a 22-year-old woman called Sydney Leathers.

During their correspondence, he said he had been in contact with two other women, telling one of them he was an ‘argumentative, perpetually horny middle-aged man’.

Not surprisingly, his mayoral hopes dive-bombed — he got less than five per cent of Democrat votes in a primary.

But Weiner’s libido couldn’t be quelled. He continued to contact other women. In August, it emerged he had sexted another woman, sending one picture while lying in bed with his young son.

This photo of her husband posing suggestively next to their child proved the last straw for his wife. Having loyally stood beside him in public and even hidden in the boot of friends’ cars so she could secretly visit him at the height of the storm, Huma Abedin finally filed for divorce after what she called ‘long and painful consideration and work on my marriage’.

Many were surprised she hadn’t dumped him much earlier, especially given the embarrassment the scandal risked causing to Mrs Clinton’s election hopes.

The reason she didn’t, some speculated, was that she was motivated by the way Hillary had stood by husband Bill despite his infidelity.

Plagued by scandal: Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, pictured in April 2011

And like Mrs Clinton, who was convinced that the sex claims against her husband were part of a Right-wing conspiracy to bring him down, Weiner spun the same line to his wife about the stories about his own grotesque sexual behaviour.

The glamorous and highly-intelligent Abedin, a Muslim of Indian and Pakistani parents, was born in Michigan but raised in Saudi Arabia and educated at a British private school. She started working for Mrs Clinton when she was a 21-year-old university student and working as a White House intern.

Weiner described her as ‘the most competent, graceful person I’ve met in all my years in politics’, but he added: ‘And she’s the hatchet woman! The person at the side of the principal is usually the bad guy.’

Ironically, Mrs Clinton had been the matchmaker who brought them together. During a conference for Democrat politicians in 2001, Weiner asked Abedin out for a drink.

She said she was too busy, but Mrs Clinton urged her to go, saying: ‘Of course, all you young people should go out!’

It proved a fateful decision. Weiner pursued an initially uninterested Abedin but she eventually warmed to him and they married in 2010 — having their son in 2011.

THE LOYAL SERVANT

Described as Mrs Clinton’s ‘body woman’, Abedin is never far from her side. (In the poisonous world of Washington politics, some opponents have even sneered that their relationship may have been ‘more than platonic’.)

Under fire: FBI chief James Comey disclosed that he was reviving the investigation after discovering new emails during a separate inquiry that might be ‘pertinent’ to the Clinton case

In truth, Mrs Clinton is a mother figure to her and is said to rely on her more than anyone else during her White House bid. If Mrs Clinton wins next week, it is said Abedin will be given a senior White House job.

Abedin has said that she had a ‘lot of personal conversations’ with Mrs Clinton over her husband’s behaviour but didn’t feel comfortable in saying what was actually said. She has described the Clinton family’s ‘unconditional love and support’ for her as a ‘real gift’.

For her part, Mrs Clinton has never publicly expressed her views on whether she admired her aide for initially forgiving her husband’s transgressions just as she did Bill’s. (This contrasted with the reaction of a senior Clinton aide called Philippe Reines, who once screamed at Weiner during a call, saying he’d ‘reach through the phone’ and ‘rip out’ his throat.

In line for a top job: Huma Abedin

Other leading Democrats agree that Mrs Clinton’s loyalty could backfire since the unsavoury Weiner-Abedin circus was damaging her campaign.

THE EMAILS SCANDAL

In March last year, it emerged that while Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013, Mrs Clinton used a private family email server for official communications rather than government-maintained servers. The private server was located in the basement of the Clinton family home in Chappaqua, New York.

Communications on that private server included thousands of emails that later — after their existence came to light — were considered as having been ‘classified’ although they were not marked as such at the time.

Mrs Clinton’s decision to use a private, barely protected email server for official business might have struck even the most computer illiterate person (which Mrs Clinton claimed she is) as more than a little unwise.

It was certainly a dramatic departure from standard practice, although Colin Powell, Secretary of State under George W. Bush, had done something similar. But he used his personal email account only to communicate with friends and journalists — using an official government computer for classified communications.

Mrs Clinton never asked permission to use the private email system and officials say that had she done so, she would have been denied.

She had also broken government protocol by deleting 32,000 emails even though they are meant to be kept on federal records. These have never been recovered, prompting the Republicans to claim they contain damning evidence against her.

Evidence of what? According to her enemies, a possibility was her failings which, in 2012, led to an attack on the U.S. mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.

Mrs Clinton has been accused of responsibility for their deaths by ignoring warnings they were in danger.

Tawdry: Other leading Democrats agree that Mrs Clinton’s loyalty could backfire since the unsavoury Weiner-Abedin circus was damaging her campaign. Pictured, Weiner and Abedin

THE FBI WEIGHS IN

The FBI launched a year-long investigation of the email controversy under boss James Comey. In a devastating report that — to the fury of Republicans — stopped short of recommending criminal charges, he concluded in July that Mrs Clinton had been ‘extremely careless’ by laying out U.S. state secrets that could have been easily hacked from an email server that didn’t have 24-hour security monitoring. She had also been repeatedly dishonest, the FBI found.

For her part, she had claimed that none of the disputed emails contained classified information. But this was not true.

She also insisted she’d handed all her work-related emails to investigators. Again, not true — as they found several thousand she had kept back.

Finally, she had claimed she’d only kept both government email and personal email accounts because she didn’t want to carry around two phones. Again not true — the FBI concluded she had primarily done so because she was paranoid about a disgruntled government employee getting hold of her emails and leaking them.

Republican delight: Donald Trump

However, the FBI boss concluded that he could not recommend criminal charges, as there was insufficient proof that her offences were intentional.

THE NEW BOMBSHELL

Donald Trump and his supporters railed against the FBI decision — saying it was a huge miscarriage of justice. However, the matter seemed closed.

Then, last Friday, FBI chief James Comey disclosed that he was reviving the investigation after discovering new emails during a separate inquiry that might be ‘pertinent’ to the Clinton case.

The FBI began investigating Weiner last month following revelations by DailyMail.com that he had been ‘sexting’ a 15-year-old schoolgirl. The unnamed girl, from North Carolina, had revealed how Weiner had asked her to undress and touch herself, making obscene suggestions of what he wanted to do to her.

She said Weiner indulged in ‘rape fantasies’ and asked ‘strange questions’ over several months during an online relationship that began in January.

New York prosecutors issued a subpoena for Weiner’s mobile phone and also seized at least one electronic device belonging to his estranged wife, Huma Abedin.

It is now known that the laptop under scrutiny contains emails sent to and from Mrs Clinton’s private email server.

DEMOCRAT FURY AND REPUBLICAN DELIGHT

For Trump, this sex scandal surrounding his rival was the perfect material to concentrate on as he struggled with his own problems —being repeatedly accused of sexually molesting a string of women.

Hyperbolically, he said Mrs Clinton’s email woes were ‘bigger than Watergate’ — a reference to the corruption scandal that brought down President Nixon.

It’s certain that Anthony Weiner is a toxic embarrassment to the Clinton campaign through his connection to his wife.

At risk: Huma Abedin swore under oath that she had given up all the emails that were relevant to the FBI investigation into Mrs Clinton. Pictured, Mrs Clinton and Ms Abedin

The latest twist has dealt it a double whammy — drawing attention again to both Mrs Clinton’s awful judgment over her private email server and her top aide’s judgment over men. Meanwhile, the Clinton team have expressed concerns about the FBI’s integrity.

This follows widespread concern that the U.S. law enforcement establishment has, over the years, had little respect for Mrs Clinton, who is said to treat her Secret Service bodyguards with contempt and who was quick to accuse U.S. police of deep-seated racism over the recent string of deaths of unarmed black men at police hands.

A former FBI assistant director, James Kallstrom, said yesterday that Bill and Hillary Clinton are part of a ‘crime family’, adding that Mrs Clinton was a ‘pathological liar’.

Mrs Clinton may not be the only casualty. Huma Abedin swore under oath that she had given up all the emails that were relevant to the FBI investigation into Mrs Clinton.

They were reportedly contained on two laptops, a BlackBerry phone and some ‘files’ found in her Manhattan home.

If reports are correct that investigators found new emails on a laptop she shared with her former husband, she could be charged with perjury and face a prison sentence of up to five years.

Clinton campaign chiefs says Abedin has her full support, saying she had been ‘fully cooperative’ with the FBI investigation into her boss. But other Democrats predict that support for the beleaguered aide may evaporate if her colleagues see her as a dead weight on the Clinton campaign.

Just days ago it seemed that Mr Trump was finished, his White House bid drowning in daily revelations about his ugly treatment of women.

Now, voters are being reminded of another scandal about a middle-aged man behaving lecherously to young women — and this time it is the Democrats who are worried.

To think that Hillary assumed it was her philandering husband’s track record with women that could sink her!